Yesterday on a long bike ride I was working on memorizing a portion of Romans 8.
"Now then brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh to live according to the flesh, for if you are living according to the flesh you must die, but if by the Spirit, you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. "
I was meditating on the idea of putting to death, and musing about what it means for us to do the putting to death, but to do it "by" the Spirit. I asked the Lord why the combination of our effort and His intervention was so elusive. The clear response from Him was that it is because it is by faith. I'm sure He could have made it by sight, but He chose to make it by faith. This is true of so many of the aspects of our Christian walk. In fact all of it. This is especially true in communicating spiritual truth. In our spirits, there comes a time in our growth in the Lord that we "know" experientially the life of the Spirit. But communicating that reality, even to other believers is always elusive. The comment of Alfred North Whitehouse is painfully appropriate on this point--that all language is elliptical, and that the best tactic is to use one line of expression until it is exhausted, then abandon it for another. This is because no words are sufficient to expressed even a physical reality (much less a spiritual reality) if that reality has not been "known" by the other.
"Now then brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh to live according to the flesh, for if you are living according to the flesh you must die, but if by the Spirit, you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. "
I was meditating on the idea of putting to death, and musing about what it means for us to do the putting to death, but to do it "by" the Spirit. I asked the Lord why the combination of our effort and His intervention was so elusive. The clear response from Him was that it is because it is by faith. I'm sure He could have made it by sight, but He chose to make it by faith. This is true of so many of the aspects of our Christian walk. In fact all of it. This is especially true in communicating spiritual truth. In our spirits, there comes a time in our growth in the Lord that we "know" experientially the life of the Spirit. But communicating that reality, even to other believers is always elusive. The comment of Alfred North Whitehouse is painfully appropriate on this point--that all language is elliptical, and that the best tactic is to use one line of expression until it is exhausted, then abandon it for another. This is because no words are sufficient to expressed even a physical reality (much less a spiritual reality) if that reality has not been "known" by the other.
Aspens in their ColorFall of '07 Near Mt. Princeton, Colorado
I was explaining my thoughts to Shelly this morning and used the analogy of an Aspen tree. Aspens abound in Colorado. Anyone who has lived in Colorado would know an Aspen, even if it was the only tree they could identify. You simply can't miss them. In the fall they turn a radiant gold and seem to position themselves against the high altitude deep blue of the mountain sky. In the summer they are known as "quakies" because of the soothing sight and sound of how the heart shaped leaves shimmer in the breeze. In the Spring they are the curse of the neghboorhoods as they put out more cotton than the cotton woods, turning nooks and crannies into fluff repositories (and setting off the allergies of thousands. And in the winter--which can last for nine months in some places where the Aspens grow--their stark white and brown trunks stand in vivid relief against the inevitable deep green of their Spruce and Ponderosa neighbors. Yet try and explain an Aspen to someone who has never "known" one.
Even after the foregoing paragraph and the picture, if you have never lived with Aspens, you could walk right by one and not recognize it. For the person who knows the Aspen, just it's name brings to mind everything I mentioned, and more. For the person who doesn't know the Aspen, it takes descriptions of sight, sound, season and every other possible Aspen-ality for the person to have a chance of getting it. They will never really get it without experiencing it. "Taste and see that the Lord is good."
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